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Algarve |
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A stress-free life improves recall
• 21 Nov 2007 •
 IT’S SAID that keeping your body healthy helps to keep your mind alert. If that’s the case, then how come, when I swim my usual 25 lengths per day, I always manage to lose count?
In the six years we’ve lived here I really can’t remember if we’ve ever been able to swim this late in the year.
My memory for such details is so hopeless you’d think I was genetically impaired.
This, however, cannot be the case as my father played classical music on the piano – from memory – when he was in his eighties. My mother, at the same age, could still recite poetry from when she was a child. Their long and short-term memories were sound.
I would have been a laughing stock in Roman times when people held memory in the highest of esteem.
Even today some exceptional and unusual brains inhabit our planet. One of them belongs to a 41-year-old woman who is able to remember every detail of her life since she was eleven. Her condition has been given a new name by neuroscientists: - Hyperthymestic Syndrome, which, as it turns out, makes her more of a freak than I am.
Nevertheless, I expect like me, many older expatriates living in the Algarve wonder how best to keep their brains alert.
Firstly let me assure you there is no proof that homeopathic tablets such as ginkgo biloba make a difference. It is much more important to eat a healthy diet, have plenty of sleep and lead a stress-free life.
New research supports the long-held belief that a brain which suffers from upset and anxiety is much more likely to turn itself off.
In other words chronic stress leads to intellectual impairment.
Ironically however, the woman I’ve already mentioned – the one with total recall – has suffered from tremendous anxiety, worrying about the reasons why her memory is so good.
Even more confusingly, there are times when she is remembering what she was remembering, when she was remembering – ad infinitum – years and years before.
For the past seven years she has been the subject of research at the University of California and despite the fact her life is very stressful, her ability to memorise everything from one day to another has not gone away.
For the rest of us it seems there is nothing better for the memory than leading a tranquil life. Contradictory though this may sound, ‘Forget your troubles to automatically improve your recall!’ |  Return to Top
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